Metallism: a real unorthodox commonapp essay

Metallism

Do you know how it feels to be touched by God? I do. I swear. I felt him yesterday.

Call me crazy but I will stick to my claim. I have felt god, and have done so numerous times before. It was only yesterday that I realized it was Him.

When I think back, I can say that I have felt his presence for almost everyday for the last three of four years. Confused? You should be. It's because despite being told that He is all around you, you have never noticed him. I know why. There is a medium, a state of mind that you need to be in before you can interact. And that medium is metal. As in, metal music. I assure you of my sanity.

It will be really hard; wait let me rephrase that; it will be impossible for an outsider to comprehend the spirituality that is intertwined with heavy metal. After all, this music is vulgar, boorish, aggressive and vehement. Songs have no structure, rhythm has no meaning, lyrics make no sense. And the fans? Heathens. They go to concerts, they engage in battles, they swirl their heads, they scream, they shout.

And yet, we know what divinity feels like, and you don't. Whenever I am listening to metal, I get separated from the physical world, succumbing to isolation. I feel energy pulsating through every artery, every vein, every capillary. My emotions start going wild. I feel anger and I feel peace. I feel love and I feel hate. I see black and I see white. All my feelings scream out, they tear out of me, forming a bizarre cacophony, to which I start swinging my head from side to side, attempting to drown it out. It is painful and sweet to hear at the same time. And at one point it stops. Everything stops. I fell overpowered, overwhelmed by a force I cannot see. And I am flying. I fall back to the physical world. I had felt God.

I do not expect you to understand, even if you turn on some metal right now and attempt to feel what I feel. The world of metal is dark and unwelcoming. It will penetrate you but ever so slowly. It will levitate you, but ever so slightly. And you will lose your faith in it.

You will criticize it and condemn its advocators. You will regard it as blasphemy and you will antagonize it. And I do not blame you. Humanity has been down that path before. They were skeptical when Jesus started preaching. They were skeptical after he was ostracized. They were skeptical right until he was crucified. But their skepticism disappeared didn't it? Jesus proved himself.

I am not certain if metal can ever be proven. And I am not certain if what I experience is divinity at all. But regardless of the doubts, I love the feeling. I love the feeling of isolation when I listen to metal at home. I love the feeling of unity when I listen to metal in a concert, standing arm in arm with a fellow human being I have never met. It's the feeling that makes Metal a religion; and I am a devout follower.

i really want to send this, but i dont know if it'll be ok to do so.

Do you know how it feels to be touched by God? I do. I swear. I felt him yesterday. (make no sense)
I think you should tell how Metalism (or metal rock, I don't know) affects you.
your essay doesn't talk much about you

hmm i guess you're right

You should probably not submit an essay that compares Jesus to heavy metal music. The key to writing effectively is to know your audience. If you were writing for heavy metal fans, then your essay would be great. If you were writing purely for yourself, it wouldn't matter in the slightest. However, you are writing for university application reviewers. Some of them may be deeply Christian, and likely to be offended by the comparison. Moreover, even if they are not, the essay doesn't tell them much about you except that you are likely to pollute their campus with music they probably dislike, and that you have the political sensitivity of . . . well, someone with no political sensitivity. These are not qualities that are likely to get you admitted into the university. If you want to talk about heavy metal, get rid of the religious comparisons, and replace them with a discussion of how your love of heavy metal indicates something good about you.

Wow, I actually like the approach you take, asserting the spiritual experience that can come from music. What I think should change is the assumption that the reader has not had the spiritual experience:

I certainly was . It's because, despite having been told that He is all around me, I still had never noticed him. I know why. There is a medium, a state of mind that one needs to be in before interaction with Him is possible. And that medium, for me, is metal. That is to say, the musical genre known as "metal." I assure you of my sanity.

If you do it that way, it is humble instead of presumptuous. About finding God in metal, I say go for it! If these people are so closed-minded that they cannot appreciate this truth to which you refer, you don't want to go to their uptight school anyway.

That said, it is also true that people often associate metal with adolescent anger, which makes them prejudiced against you. Sean is right that this is a risky approach, but sometimes you have to take the risky approach to be true to yourself. The strongest way to make sure it is right is to write 2 more essays, with different themes, and see which one seems strongest to you. Do you have the discipline to write another essay or 2 to compare with this??!! :)

:)

You can certainly go with finding God in music, even in heavy metal music -- just don't make it any specific God. In other words, talk about god with a small "g" instead of with a large "G," so as to avoid giving offense to any particular religion. If you say that listening to heavy metal is a spiritual experience for you, then that is a personal thing that no one will take offense to. If you say you find Jesus, or Vishnu, or Buddha, then you risk offending people, because let's face it, a lot of heavy metal music has lyrics that might at first glance seem incompatible with the religions from which these figures come. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's fine to talk about spirituality -- I'd just avoid religion.

Also, don't forget that you want all of your application essays to show something about you that makes you a good applicant. Spirituality might work, but only if you can connect it to something outside of heavy metal. In other words, your love of heavy metal is not in and of itself a quality that the application reviewers would care about, because it does not immediately suggest any way that you would contribute to the university.

thanks a lot for all the advice. As much as I loved writing this essay, I was a bit skeptical about sending it. Now I know that it would be too much of a risk to do so, so i think i'll write something else.

Keep the essay on file, though. You might find a use for it in another venue. The essay wasn't poorly-written -- it just wasn't all that appropriate for your particular audience. In any event, I hope you post your new essay here for more feedback.